Audi's head of motorsport Dieter Gass said there had been no need to change any drivers or reshuffle their team places going into the DTM's new Class One rules era.

"In Loic, Robin, Jamie, Nico, Rene and Mike we already had an extremely strong driver squad in 2018," said Gass.

"In my view, they’re the right six for Audi Sport. All of them have the potential to battle for the DTM title. Aside from that, they again proved to be extremely good team players last season.

"In the past, we changed the team compositions from time to time. However, in the current pairings, the drivers complement each other perfectly so that we didn’t see any room for improvement in this respect."

There will be eight Audis on the 2019 DTM grid as its long-time GT partner WRT is joining the series to field two customer cars.

WRT's line-up is yet to be announced, but last week Audi tried seven new drivers in the traditional end-of-season rookie tests.

Ex-Williams Formula 1 racer Sergey Sirotkin, World Rallycross star Andreas Bakkerud and European Formula 3 drivers Sacha Fenestraz and Jonathan Aberdein were among the drivers trying Audi's DTM car in the Jerez sessions - in which WRT was involved alongside the works team.